1. Field
The disclosure relates to a method, apparatus, system, and an article of manufacture for processing control data by an offload adapter.
2. Background
A network adapter may be coupled to a host system to provide communications. Some network adapters may provide hardware support for the processing of data related to the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) that may be used for communications. Such network adapters may be referred to as TCP/IP offload engine (TOE) adapters. Further details of the TCP/IP protocol are described in the publication entitled “Transmission Control Protocol: DARPA Internet Program Protocol Specification,” prepared for the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency (RFC 793, published September 1981).
TOE adapters may perform all or major parts of the TCP/IP protocol processing. including processing send requests, i.e., requests to send packets from a host system to a computational device. High speed data transmission technologies may be used for coupling a host system to a network. As a result a TOE adapter coupled to the host system may have to handle a large number of connections. The flow of packets to and from the host system in such high speed transmission technologies may be high. The TOE adapter may store control data related to a large number of packets and connections, where the control data may include information about the packets and connections. Further details of the TOE adapter in high speed data transmission technologies, such as, Gigabit Ethernet, are described in the publication entitled “Introduction to the TCP/IP Offload Engine” available from the 10 Gigabit Ethernet Alliance (published April, 2002).